Faculty - Cynthia Blair

Cynthia M. Blair
Curriculum Vitae

Personal:

Current Position:: Associate Professor
Address:: University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)
Department of History
913 University Hall (M/C 198)
601 South Morgan Street
Chicago, IL 60607-7109

Phone:(312) 996-9471
Fax: 312-996-5799
E-mail:cmblair@uic.edu
Education:

Ph.D., Harvard University, History of American Civilization, 1999

M.A., Harvard University, History, 1989

B.A., University of Michigan, American Culture and English, 1986

Research Areas:

My research interests include the history of race and sexuality in the United States, African American urban history, and African American women's history. My research has focussed primarily on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I am currently doing research for the expansion of my study of African American prostitution in Chicago at the turn of the century. This entails archival work in various municipal collections and in the papers of private and public social welfare agencies in Chicago and Cook County between 1900 and 1930.

Publications:

Dissertation:

"'Vicious' Commerce: African American Women's Sex Work and the Transformation of Urban Space in Chicago, 1850-1915"

Scholarly presentations:

Review of "Goin' to Chicago" and "The Promised Land," for The Journal of Urban History, forthcoming in 2000.
"'We Must Live Anyhow': African American Sex Work in Chicago, 1874-1900." Delivered at the Newberry Library, Seminar in American Social History, December 1998.
"'Gigantic Negresses,' Degraded Urban Spaces, and the Regulation of Sexual Commerce in Late Nineteenth-Century Chicago." Delivered at Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, January 1998.
"Paying for Sex: Masculinity and the Sexual Leisure Industry in Chicago, 1920-1940." Delivered at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June 1996.
"The Racial Marking of Vicious City Streets in Chicago, 1874-1900." Delivered at the Gender and Society Workshop, University of Chicago, April, 1996.
"The Appearance of Evil: 'Vicious' Black Women in Chicago, 1900-1912." Delivered at the American Studies Association meeting, November, 1993.
"Carmen Jones and the Ethnographic Gaze." Delivered at Barnard Feminist Art Historian's Conference, October, 1991.
"Dorothy Dandridge: The Problem of Narrating Black Female Sexuality in Classic Hollywood Cinema," presented at the National Conference of the Society for Photographic Education, March, 1991.

Fellowships and Awards:

Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1999
Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for Minorities, 1995
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Pre-doctoral Fellowship, 1994
Carter G. Woodson Institute for the Study of African American and African Studies, University of Virginia, Pre-doctoral Fellowship, 1992
Radcliffe Grant for Graduate Women, 1992
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Ten-Week Graduate Student Fellowship, 1991
Harvard University Fellowship, 1987-1992

Teaching Experience:

Assistant Professor, Department of African American Studies and Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1999 - present
Lecturer, Department of African American Studies and Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1996-1999
Instructor, Harvard University, 1990-1992

Professional Service:

Department of African American Studies, UIC, Curriculum Committee, 1999-2000
Department of History, UIC, Goodman Award Committee, 1999-2000
American Historical Association, Committee on Minority Historians, 1995-1998

Memberships:

American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
American Studies Association

Department of history